Today's telecommunication systems provide a wide range of routing and enhanced services that are managed, controlled and executed in a distributed way. Consequently, the handling and updating of service data in such a distributed environment becomes of growing importance.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,896,441 describes a communication state management system implementing an updating functionality within an intelligent network. This network is composed of electronic switches called SSPs (Service Switching Points) and servers called SCPs (Service Control Points). Each of the SSPs is intended to transfer service requests from a subscriber to a service control network to control the communications network according to an instruction given by the service control network. Each of the SCPs includes an integrated data base which normally stores subscriber information, network configuration information, service control software and so on and integrates communication service capabilities such as communication processing capability, service providing capability, path selecting and control capability and so on. This data base includes management tables in order to provide number conversion services. Such services convert an “IN telephone number”, which is a virtual number, to a “telephone number” that is a telephone number of a normal subscriber. The SCPs update the communication states of the converted telephone number upon update requests from corresponding SSPs. If a fault occurs in the link between an SCP and SSP, the SSP recognizes the link and newly establishes a link between the SCP and itself. After that, the SCP inquires the SSP about the communication states of the subscriber, registered in said SSP. Thereby, the system implements a central and sequential update mechanism that uses translation tables.